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- Convenors:
-
Agnieszka Koscianska
(University of Warsaw)
Agnieszka Pasieka (University of Montreal)
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- Discussant:
-
Victor Trofimov
(European University Viadrina)
- Formats:
- Roundtables Network affiliated
- Sessions:
- Thursday 23 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This session explores right-wing politicization of knowledge in CEE, and the crisis facing critical social science there. Asking what drives such developments, and how imaginings of East/West divides shape them, we seek to better grasp their concrete dynamics, and how to resist and challenge them.
Long Abstract:
Critical social sciences face a difficult moment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The expulsion of Central European University, and Gender Studies, from Hungary, the takeover of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences by the Orbán government, threats to close the European University at St. Petersburg, and the removal by Polish and Hungarian governments of cultural anthropology and ethnology from officially accredited disciplines are only the most visible forms of the right-wing politicization of knowledge in CEE countries. While often read as reinforcing Europe's East/West divide, such attacks are part of global conservative, neoliberal, and traditionalist turns. This roundtable explores the contexts, interpretations, and challenges of the politicization of critical social sciences in CEE. We ask: (1) What, and who, drives such developments? (2) How do the geotemporal politics of both the critical sciences and imaginings of an "East/West Divide" shape them, and (3) How can we challenge and resist them - without reinforcing them? We seek to complicate standard narratives of "populism" and "power-hungry elites" and ask how both right-wing movements and the critical sciences themselves have, through their attachments to various "Wests" and "Easts," together instantiated the borders which now pit them against one another? We also hope to explore concretely how individual academics and educational institutions can oppose attacks on critical, social science thinking in CEE and elsewhere. Do defenses of (the West's?) "academic freedom" offer safety? Is exile a solution? What solidarities - activist, academic, or political - offer strength and possibility?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 23 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
The present round table talk proposal is inspired by a recently published series on activism, academia, and equality in Central Asia where much attention was paid to equity and accountability of academic exchange and engagement within the so-called "West" - "East" interaction.
Paper long abstract:
The talk would aim to discuss the multilayered nature of challenges one inevitably has to deal with if she decides to conduct in the area of feminist research in Ukrainian academia. On the one hand, the influence of right-wing activists and conservative groups such as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have gained political weight and now became a real threat to both civil society activism and the development of critical social sciences in academia. On the other hand, entering international academia, a scholar has to deal with the 'free market' conditions: publishing in foreign language, quoting the 'right' people, attending expensive international conferences, paying membership fees out of their own pockets - the list is far from being exhaustive. The proposal suggests adding to the discussion the topic of the role that Western academia plays in reproducing and strengthening certain barriers for non-Western scholars to join the so-called 'global' academic exchange rather than presenting Western scholars (or non-Western scholars who ended up joining Western academia) as those mainly challenging local heteroactivism(s) and right-wing politicization of knowledge in the region.
Paper short abstract:
In the context of the EU-funded action research projects in the field of LGBT rights, in the proposed paper I analyze how their specific dynamics work for and against empowerment of critical social sciences in an increasingly conservative environment of contemporary Poland.
Paper long abstract:
In the case of formerly socialist CEE countries a process of the EU accession is commonly envisioned as a form of modernization. The EU-related version of modernity requires implementation of human rights regimes, including (neo)liberal model of sexual citizenship (Ammaturo 2017). Against this backdrop, the EU-funded action research projects conducted in the EU Member States aim at assessment of the current state of affairs and exchange of "best practices" in the realm of cultural and legal LGBT rights. Their underlying premises purpose to measure a degree of modernity or backwardness in this respect. But, the effectiveness of such tools of modernization become problematic in a country where the LGBT rights are not the main frame of reference for non-heteronormative experience, and right-wing politicization of knowledge precludes putting the project findings into practice.
In the proposed paper I investigate ambivalent workings of modernization á l'européenne on the example of two EU-based action research projects focused on cultural and legal LGBT rights, and conducted in Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland. Drawing on analytical insights of postcolonial and postsocialist studies, I discuss how diversified ideas of socialism, backwardness, Europe, the EU, modernity, neoliberalism, the LGBT rights, right-wing nationalism, the nation state and the like, work both for and against the empowerment of critical social sciences in culturally and politically conservative environment of contemporary Poland. In particular, I analyze how the aforementioned entanglements give rise to and/or problematize various materializations of the West/East divide.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on my research experience in the field of gender, sexuality and religion, I ask: How can research that goes beyond political divisions between "progressive elites" and "populist Catholics" be designed and conducted?
Paper long abstract:
Poland is generally depicted as a predominantly Catholic country in which the Church governs people's souls and behaviors. Furthermore, Polish Catholicism is seen as inherently conservative and impervious to change. As this image influences both public debate and academic research, any discussion about the Catholic Church in regard to sexuality and reproduction in Poland is limited to vehement statements by the "progressive elites" ("the Church is solely responsible for the lack of sexual and reproduction rights") and "populist Catholics" ("feminists and LGBT activists pose a threat to the Polish nation").
In this roundtable intervention, I endeavor to deconstruct this image and search for other ways of approaching religion in Poland. Drawing on my research experience in the field of gender, sexuality and religion, including a new project entitled "Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930-Present", I ask: How can research that goes beyond political divisions between "progressive elites" and "populist Catholics" and approaches the issues of Catholicism and sexuality in a more nuanced fashion be designed and conducted? Could anthropology - no longer an officially accredited academic discipline in Poland - contribute to crafting new ways of talking about sexuality and reproduction in the country? And, how can anthropologists engage politically to re-shape oversimplistic imaginaries and extend public debate beyond the entrenched political divisions?